6/21/13—Breathing In The Creative Spirit

Today's Today's Draw is special, because it's part of a Tarot Blog Hop. What that means is that, from this post, you can link to the blog before me or to the blog after me. And if you keep linking in that manner from blog to blog, you can read 24 tarot blogs, all focused around a single theme. This particular blog hop is to celebrate the summer solstice and we're supposed to share one of our gifts with you...to write about something we're good at or do something creative.

In other words, I get to go hog wild. Mix things up. Get my goof on.

You'd think I'd savor that opportunity. But you know what? I'd really rather just share some thoughts about my personal relationship with creativity in the manner to which my regular readers have become accustomed. So with that...

Today's Draw: The Lovers in the Spirit position from The Wild Unknown and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. How dependent are you on your creative spirit? If you spent your days pushing paper and had no hobbies, could you be happy? What stands between you and your creative spirit?

I nearly cried when I drew this combo. The Lovers means different things to different readers. Sometimes it speaks of soul mates. Sometimes it speaks of a choice. In the Spirit position, however, I can definitely say that the creative life is both my soul mate and my choice.

When I was young, I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then when I got a little older, I wanted to by a cytologist...a cell biologist. I wanted to clone things. Those probably sound like weird things for someone like me to want to do. They're "desk jobs"...regular jobs. Certainly there's creativity in both things. But they're weighted to left brained thinking. They were practical choices...careers I would have enjoyed and done well at. Careers my parents would have been proud for me to have. 

But then I would have forever been fated to becoming one of those people who say "oh, I could have been a writer" when they meet people who earn their living that way. Those people make my eyes roll because they make me think, "well what's stopping you?" It's not like you need special permission to start a blog or submit a manuscript. It's so easy to say "oh, I could have been a writer" when you don't know what it actually takes to sit in front of a blank page every day and fill it with words some idiot will feel a need to edit. 

So instead of choosing to sit behind a microscope, I chose to spend my life in a career where my words would be put under a microscope. On the plus side, I'm the kind of writer who gets to think up wacky ideas and have fun with my writing...an advertising copywriter. 

There was a time at the beginning of my career in advertising that I wasn't a writer. I worked in the traffic department, which is the part of an advertising agency that moves work from one department to another. So an account executive will put in an order for work and the traffic manager will distribute that work to the relevant parties. Then when the work is complete, the traffic person will move it to the next step and next, all the way to the point that it's printed or goes live. The traffic department manages the workflow of the creative and production departments.

Anyway, I liked the job and did well at it. But I was miserable inside because the writer within me was crying out for attention. I felt incomplete, like part of me was missing. As time went by, the writer was fighting to crawl out of my skin. So I found a mentor among the agency's copywriters and she would give me fake assignments to do. I then convinced the creative director to let me handle a few overflow jobs...nothing glamorous. Just stuff the writers were too busy to do. It was, in retrospect, the only time of my life that I didn't have a reliable creative outlet. And it was its own special misery in my young life. I could have started a hobby or something, I suppose. But ultimately, having that unfed hunger was good for me. It's what gave me the wherewithal to keep pushing until I got what I wanted. 

Those of us who write, generally do it because something within us has to find its way out. And we're wired to do it through words. Someone with that inside them can't do life as "oh, I could have been a writer". There's either writing or a long, slow, miserable death. 

Beyond writing, though, is the creative spirit in general. Writing alone can't satisfy it for me. So I craft. I cook. I sew. I create. That green card up in the picture is one of my creations. I invented a whole new way of creating spreads in the tarot world, the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Tarot is something I've been doing nearly as long as I've been writing. So it's one of my talents, too. And that green card is just one of four decks I created in the past year or two. Not because it brings me money. It doesn't. It gives me something of greater value. It keeps me happy to be alive. 

So this Lovers card in the Spirit position, for me, is like the dance between creativity and my own spirit. Like the geese in the picture, creativity and I are flying in unison. I love being an advertising copywriter. But it's not as glamorous as you see on TV. We're not as "in charge" as Peggy Olson or "everybody loves my ideas" as Don Draper. Being an advertising copywriter is like popping out baby after baby, only to have the majority of them rejected or deemed ugly. Only now and again does someone say, "hey that baby has potential". And that's a moment of victory—the moment when someone gets it...when someone gets YOU. 

But not even that is why I choose this path. Creativity is my oxygen. And whether or not others think I'm good at it is a minor consideration. It's in the process of creation—the process of breathing that oxygen in—that I get my reward. At a time when others my age might start counting down the years to retirement, I look forward to writing until my final breath. If nearly 1000 blog posts haven't worn me out of things to say, I'm pretty sure nothing as random as a retirement age will. :)

Want to soak up more of the creative spirit? Continue on to the next blog in the hop, written by the FABULOUS Chloe McCracken, a Daily Draw regular. Or be wacky and work your way backwards to the post before mine, created by the insightful Jordan Hoggard. Or if you're really in a hoppy mood, consult this list of all the bloggers in the circle and hop around!

4/10/13—Shedding Our Antlers

Today's Draw: Son of Pentacles from the Wild Unknown in the Present Hopes and Fears position from the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Are at one hopeful and afraid of a change you want to make in your life? Are you ready to throw caution to the wind? And what if you left this life without doing it...would you be ok with that?

Sons, or Knights as they're usually called, are the crusaders of the tarot. They're on a quest. They're old enough to carry out that quest and make their own decisions, and young enough to take chances without fearing loss. 

There's a magic to that time in life when we have so few responsibilities that we can just throw caution to the wind. It is the Knight's greatest strength, but one that can lead to his downfall. I like that this Knight or Son is a young buck, because bucks carry that magic in my mind. I have a special relationship with bucks, going so far as to having shared a mystical experience with one a number of years back. 

It always amazes me that deer shed their antlers every year. So you see these 8 point bucks and all of that was grown within a year. You'd think forests and woods would be littered with shed antlers, but have you ever seen one? I haven't. I guess it's all part of the magic. 

The suit of Pentacles is an odd duck. It covers money, career and material concerns. But it's also about health. And family life. And so when we talk about "present hopes and fears" with the Knight, we could be talking about new quests in any of those areas. ("Present" is superfluous in this card combo, btw. In tarot everything is read to cover the present, unless specifically deemed otherwise with a Past or Future card.)

So I hope to branch out in a new career as an author. I mean, I already am one, but I hope to make it my career one day. But it also scares me because it's unknown. Best-selling authors in the mainstream media earn big chunks of cash. And I'd like to write spiritual books that are more mainstream. But what if I fail? What if I can't cut it? 

If I were a Knight, I'd sell my home and live off the equity I have and spend all my time writing. It's certainly something that's occurred to me. And I've been known to take risks. But that's one I think I fear too much. 

On the other hand, I also fear NOT doing it. I really do enjoy my present career. I have plenty of opportunity to be creative and I write every day. But I really like having something that I can "own" as my own thing, like the Deck of 1000 Spreads. 

So that's how the Hopes and Fears card works. It's a little of both things...hopes and fears. And with the Son of Pentacles, it could be about a health initiative you're undertaking or a family change you're thinking of making, too. 

I often think that we can spend all our time in thinking and debating the hopes and fears that we never end up moving forward. I know I've spent a lot of time doing that myself. I've always imagined it like skydiving or bungee jumping...that you'd sit up there and noodle it until some second of time comes when you throw caution to the wind and just jump. Although I'd be too scared to do EITHER of those things...haha...you get the drift. 

But I also think that if I went all the way up in the air to skydive and then chickened out, I'd never quite forgive myself, you know? So I think there comes a time when we just have to throw caution to the wind and shed those antlers we've been carrying around all these years. Or forever wish we'd had. 

We all know what wishing and hoping feels like. Are we prepared to do that for the rest of our lives? I don't think I am. Because then I'd never know if this thing inside that tells me I MUST do this...I'm destined to do this...was right. I mean, what if we never managed to do something we came here to do? That's why we all have to eventually. Just. Jump. 

3/7/13—Finding Your Way Within

Today's Draw: Hermit in the You position from the Wild Unknown and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Do you believe that, no matter how many others may be in our lives, we're all ultimately alone? What does the thought of "being alone" make you feel? How much do you trust your inner understanding of truth over that of society's understanding of truth?

Wow. Way to be subtle tarot! Even the most novice of novices can read THIS message loud and clear...haha.

There's more to The Hermit than just being a recluse, though. The Hermit is a recluse for a reason. He withdraws from society to seek inner wisdom and spiritual truth. The fewer stimuli and interruptions, the more he's able to see. And while he pokes around with his lamp in the dark corners of life, he's able to see things he might otherwise see.

The Hermit is usually on the move when we see him in other tarot cards, but this guy is in total stealth mode. He's ready to see the things only owls and trees see as they silently observe the world below. And this guy has a ground level view.

In a way, the Hermit card speaks of many things required on our spiritual journeys. For example, he shines his light on the wisdom within. This is synchronistically illustrated by the way the lamp is pointing right at the word "you" in the picture. But it's also illustrated by how the turtle is pulled inside with eyes wide open.

Going within to seek knowledge and the truth of ourselves is a very scary thing. But it's also powerful to recognize that each of us holds divine wisdom and knowledge. We don't need the affirmation of those outside of us. Being comfortable and confident enough within our own shell to know and see the truth of ourselves and others rewards us with the ability to trust our own instincts, abilities, intuition, knowledge and strength. Once we become firmly footed in those things, nobody can take them away from us. This is key, because think of how many times you've deferred to others on those grounds, only to have your own instincts proven right.

Another thing the Hermit speaks of detachment. This is not only in the way he detaches from the cacophony of the world to hear the silence within, but it's also in the way he detaches from what he's been told in order to reference his own wisdom. This is what the whole spiritual journey is about, imo. Religion is what you're taught about God and spirituality is what you learn about God through your own inner seeking. While others can offer techniques and support along your spiritual journey, it simply must be traveled alone.

Again, this takes courage and trust in your own inner knowing. But it's a personal relationship that, even though you may be able share the fruits of with like minds, you nonetheless have to detach from outside influences in order to find authentically.

A third thing the Hermit speaks of is intertwined with the detachment thing. It's the idea of seeing things with new eyes and a new mind. We have to detach from what we've been told and what everyone else sees as being real in order to have our eyes open enough to see what is truly real. Every experience and interaction in our lives colors the "truth" or "what is". And while the pursuit of truth is a lifelong and ever-shifting journey, if we stand any chance of seeing it, it's has to be through virgin eyes that have detached from all preconception.

This is why the Hermit searches in the night and why this particular one sits silently within his shell appearing as a rock or stone to all stimulus around him. He needs the silence and stillness, as well as the ability to shine a light on things normally unseen, to find the truth of his world.

If there were one message to walk away from all of this with, it's the simplest and most basic one of spiritual pursuit—you are the light, the seer and the knower. There is no mystery or question that can't be resolved from within. You don't need to become illuminated or enlightened. You've got that already. You just need to raise your lamp and steer your way there.

3/5/13—Digging Into Past Lives

Today's Draw: Six of Pentacles in a Past Life from The Wild Unknown and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Do you believe that children are more psychically inclined than older children and adults? Do you believe in past lives? And if you do, what do you suppose you learned in past lives that you won't have to deal with in this one?

Back when I was three or four years old I had a number of premonitions or mystical experiences that I've carried with me all my life. I've told this story before, but this fertile period of "awareness" all happened while I was living in the "creepy room"—a tiny room that was intended to be a closet, but we turned into a bedroom. 

Anyway, during that time I felt like I "downloaded" a lot of information from...somewhere. Or something. Some of it, I'm pretty sure, was about a past life. Some of it was stuff that I remembered, but didn't understand the significance of until much later in life. And some of it came in the form of just "knowing" what some of my struggles would—and wouldn't—be in this lifetime. Today's card reminds me of one of those things because I've just always believed that any lesson of poverty or gross mismanagement of money happened in a previous life. So far it also seems like any lesson involving having way more than I need was saved for another life, too...haha. But I've always had enough to keep me from struggling and that was the premonition—that I wouldn't struggle. 

While the Six of Pentacles is usually about giving or receiving money, in this deck it's about prosperity and growth. So this pair is talking about a lesson of prosperity and growth that came from a past life. That can mean you're not going to struggle in this life. Or it can mean a resentment, fear, false belief or impediment of some sort that came from a prosperous past life. 

Thinking about all of this and what it means to me brings up a whole sack of warring philosophical thoughts. So I had this notion as a small child. Is is possible that it came from my imagination and, having that belief from a young age, drove the eventual reality in my life? I very much ascribe to this method of creating things in our lives, so it's possible. 

Could it be that I was getting input from spirits their messages had nothing to do with me? Part of the creepiness of that room was that I heard Native American-type drumming every night that terrified me because, even then, it felt otherworldly. 

Or could it really be a past-life lesson and one I didn't need to learn in this lifetime? Any one of my brothers and sisters will tell you about the lucrative industry I created in my pre-school years centered around selling dirt-clad rocks, pebbles and gravel to my parents for precious pennies and nickels that could be spent on candy at Pat's Market.  

Or could it have nothing to do with mystical matters at all and, instead, be because I work hard and have my hand in so many pots that I have good "insurance", financially speaking? When you look at the picture, it could suggest this. Each clump of leaves collects the water and sun needed to produce the fruit. And there are many clumps collecting the energy needed to bear fruit. 

Of course, these are all questions we'll never know the answers to...at least not in this incarnation. Some of the information I got at that time has come to pass in one way or another. Not small things, either. My career in advertising, my struggle with weight and the money thing among them. But, of course, some of it has also not yet come to pass. 

But this prompts us all to ask ourselves some of the big questions. How much of our live is pre-determined and how much is not? How much do we create through our thoughts and how much by our will? And what tough past-life lessons are you gratefully free of having to deal with this time around?

3/2/13-3/3/13—Releasing the Chains of the Past

Weekend Reading: Judgment in the You position from The Wild Unknown and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. The judgment card is about rebirth and transformation and transcending things. So this weekend you have a chance to finally beat that nagging bad habit, overcome lingering fears or just drop the old and begin the new. Something in the ether will open up and, even if it's been hard in the past, you'll be able to start shedding that part of you that's weighing you down, whether you've been conscious of it or not. Sometimes we get these inklings that it could really be that easy to just walk away from something that's been dogging us. And we let the moments pass us by, settling back into our old routines and prisons. But now I'm giving you fair warning so you'll be prepared. This weekend brings another one of those cracks in the universe that can catapult us out of our limitations and free us at last. Be ready for the opportunity and take it.